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The severe stereo delivery of this 1960 recording (drums and piano hard left, bass and Coltrane hard right) prevents a natural soundstage here, but arguably preserves a channel-separated clarity through which Coltrane’s post-Miles quartet can deliver its early modal exploratory of two Gershwins, one Cole Porter, and that unlikely choice of kitten-friendly ‘Sound Of Music’ title tune which yielded an (edited) hit for the group. While this version of the quartet featured Steve Davis on bass prior to the long-term arrival of Jimmy Garrison, it still points a path towards ‘A Love Supreme’, being loaded with Elvin Jones’ free-flowing drumming and McCoy Tyner’s percussive piano comping plus extended solos, given generous space by Coltrane, who sits out a full five minutes of the title track while making his first recorded outing on soprano sax. Marvellous stuff. JF Sound Quality: 90% Hi-Fi News Lab Report The graph above shows the 96kHz digitisation of this vintage recording (a 192kHz rendering would not capture any more useful information).

Devotees will need little convincing of the merits of HD Krall, resolving her soft dynamics and expanding the silences of this 1997 album of love song standards performed with her trio guitarist Russell Malone, whose rhythm figures verge on the subliminal at times, while Christian McBride returns to double bass duties provided previously for Ms Krall’s sophomore release, Only Trust Your Heart. Lacking that album’s percussion (though often retaining its high levels of vocal reverb – witness the sparse take on Billy Myles’ ‘My Love Is’), this fourth album’s vibe is even later-night and lighter, and Ms Krall’s confidence higher, her vocals pushing out for the Peggy Lee sass ’n’ swing of ‘I Don’t Know Enough About You’, but more often purring her parts with that delicious delicacy – her Chet vocal and sensitive piano dynamics a particular delight on ‘Gentle Rain’. JF Sound Quality: 85% Hi-Fi News Lab Report This 96kHz rendering shows the same slightly elevated (analogue) noise floor we’ve seen with other DK albums. Vocal harmonics (real or from a downstream limiter) often extend out to 20kHz.

96kHz/24-bit ALAC/FLAC/WAV, moscd4010 (supplied by www. naimlabel. com) It’s not uncommon that a recording identified as compromised in the Lab Report might still sound quite marvellous to these ears. Here, however, something was clearly wrong, with distortion hovering at the edge of audibility, pressuring the peaks and affecting image clarity on busier tracks like ‘Listen To Me’ and the surprising bottle-neck blues of ‘Dust My Broom’.

Recorded for the German jazz label ACT at the end of 2012 at Nilento Studio, Gothenburg, this is Korean singer Youn Sun Nah’s third album (Same Girl, from two years before, is also available from highresaudio. com but so far not Voyage, from 2008). Lento takes its name from Scriabin’s E minor Prelude, Op. 16:4 and is the opening track.

This debut programme by duoW begins, not with the great Kodály unaccompanied cello sonata, but with a less familiar duo for violin and cello (his Op. 7); it ends with an arrangement of ‘The Stars And Stripes Forever’. The Servai/Léonard extravaganza Grand Duo de Concert draws upon our own National Anthem and ‘Yankee Doodle’, while the Halvorsen is based on a Handel passacaglia – their 2011 music video of this, Ghosts And Flowers, was apparently a viral hit. The two gifted string players have Masters degrees from Juilliard and they aspire to bring classical music to a younger generation.

An appropriate title for this mish-mash of styles and songs, delivered perhaps too effortlessly by the venerable guitar god as he plucks well-ripened plums from his portfolio of styles. He Marley ups Taj Mahal’s ‘Further On Down The Road’ and carbon-copies Peter Tosh’s country-reggae crossover ‘Till Your Well Runs Dry’. Then he backs up to the 1930s for four tracks: a softly-softly ‘The Folks Who Live On The Hill’; a sloppy duet with Paul McCartney on ‘All of Me’; a slide-guitar moan through Lead Belly’s ‘Goodnight Irene’; and a downright dreary ‘Our Love Is Here To Stay’. There’s livelier stuff, including two original compositions, while the highlight is perhaps an unexpected cover of Gary Moore’s ‘Still Got The Blues’ with Stevie Winwood guest-grinding the Hammond organ.

A raucous Gershwin Prelude segues into Copland’s moody Concerto – one of his best pieces – then time-travels via Debussy (‘La fille aux cheveux de lin’) and Amy Beach (her romantic Berceuse) to 19th century concertos by Cimarosa and Spohr. Short transcriptions and concertos alternate in what may add up to a stylistically incoherent whole but one which affords the young Austrian Andreas Ottensamer, now principal clarinettist with the Berlin Philharmonic, a chance to illustrate his captivating skills in both jazzy and classical genres. His liquid sounds, wide colour palette and sense of timing sets this version of the Copland above any competition (even the recent Michael Collins/Chandos pales) and the Rotterdam Orchestra surprises in its exuberant embrace of the two American pieces. Bold, close-mic’d sound from De Doelen concert-hall.